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MHPS to survey teachers about guns

Helen Mansfield, Special to The Bulletin
Published 9:54 p.m. CT March 16, 2018

MHSB unanimously approves district-wide safety measures

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The Mountain Home School Board unanimously approved 15 measures drafted by the Mountain Home Public Safety Security Task Force to shore up existing measures and equipment to increase safety across the school district(Photo11: Josh Dooley/ The Baxter Bulletin)Buy Photo

It was not a topic that school board member Neal Pendergrass was even comfortable bringing up. But after being contacted by numerous parents and members of the community — those who support the idea of teachers with guns in the classroom and those against — Pendergrass wanted to know how the district would be able to alert law enforcement which teachers were armed in the event of a school shooting.

Thursday night, the Mountain Home School Board unanimously approved 15 measures drafted by the Mountain Home Public Safety Security Task Force to shore up existing measures and equipment to increase safety across the school district.

More changes will come online in time.

Going forward, the district will cultivate a culture where all classroom doors will be locked, create a system for students, teachers, and staff to report suspicious activity, and hire additional security staff. Board members agreed they would like to see teachers surveyed to see if any of them had an interest in being trained to carry weapons in the classroom.

Superintendent Dr. Jake Long doesn’t know at this point what the survey would look like and how it would be distributed to teachers and staff, but said he will seek input from parents and other school districts to see what the best way forward would be.

Long told board members that safety trained and armed teachers were probably the best solutions for rural school districts, where it could take law enforcement anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to arrive on the scene, but without surveying teachers he was “not comfortable recommending” arming Mountain Home teachers at this point.

“We’ll want to talk to other school districts who are considering it and those who have implemented it already,” Long said by phone.

Pendergrass added that he would like to see that the district’s eventual plans, both for evacuating the school or shuttering in place, would remain secret to only those in the district. But, he acknowledges that in shootings like that in Lakeland, Fla., former students will also know those emergency procedures.

Coming up on the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Jonesboro’s Westside Middle School, school safety is as high as a priority as it has ever been across the country, but says that every time a fire alarm is pulled, students evacuate the school which leaves them vulnerable.

Board member Dan Smakal, who owns Electronics Systems Technologies, Inc. — a home and business security firm — said there are key-operated fire alarms on the market that would prevent just anyone for pulling a school alarm for any reason. The idea that only staff could operate them coincides with another measure recommended by the MHPS Security Task Force, the idea of “if you see something, say something.”

Long said the district has begun to implement the security task force recommendations and will continue to do so through the 2018-19 school year.

In Long’s opinion, most of the upgrades can be done easily enough at six of the seven schools in the district, but he acknowledges that the high school “is a different beast,” which multiple entry and exit points that will need to be looked at.

In addition to current security resource officers, Long said he has been in contact with Mountain Home Police Chief Carry Manuel to see about adding on and off duty officers during the beginning and end of school day, when things are at their most hectic.

Along with current city and county staffing agreements, the task force recommendations included adding one SRO to each school at the cost of $50-60,000 each. At the time of the meeting, the board did not know where the addition funding for such staff would come from.

Other recommendations included strengthening mental health services for current students, as well as following up with at-risk students once they graduate from the district.